Why we need a space program

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Earlier today STS-135, the Space Shuttle Atlantis, touched down for the last time and ended an era that began in 1972 when President Nixon signed off on the development of reusable, orbiting spacecraft. In many regards the Space Shuttle program never quite lived up to expectations, but at the same time it’s hard to put a value on the data, knowledge, and wisdom that has resulted from NASA’s launches of Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour.

While the retirement of the Space Transport System isn’t in itself a surprise or mistake, the fact that it isn’t being replaced by with another government-funded program could be disastrous for society, science, and human endeavor. On a merely functional level, it is now unlikely that Hubble will ever be brought back to Earth, and more importantly it is now solely the responsibility of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to supply the International Space Station until its retirement in 2020. On a theoretical and philosophical level, the retirement of STS, the axing of its replacement — Project Constellation — and President Obama’s reticence towards a federal space program means that deep space exploration and the discovery of strange, new worlds has effectively been put on hold.

And do you know the reason for the US government’s disinterest in space travel? Budgetary concerns. Returning to the Moon and traveling to Mars — and beyond — was simply beyond NASA’s current budget. Do you know what NASA’s budget is? About $19 billion dollars. By comparison, the US Department of Defense budget for 2010 was $680 billion — and by 2012, the entire defense-related budget will total up to $1.4 trillion dollars. To put it another way, NASA receives about 0.6% of the entire $2.9 trillion US federal budget.

When you read those figures, you almost certainly found yourself in one of two camps. You either think that $19 billion is way too much: “We should fix the problems on Earth before we go into space!” — or on the other hand, you think that $19 billion is criminal under-budgeting for the most important endeavor that mankind has ever dabbled in. This isn’t a new phenomenon, either: it’s always been hard to secure funding for science and exploration. While Western governments spend hundreds of trillions of dollars on pensions, science must make do with the crappy, scrappy morsels that governments flick from the budgeting feast and onto the dusty, dirty, downtrodden floor.

Atlantis taking off on STS-27

Generally this comes back to an incredibly flawed but powerful argument: Why should we spend money on science when we’re already living wonderful lives? We live for 90 years, have all but wiped out infant mortality, and have cured everything but cancer and AIDS — surely education and the wellbeing of elders and veterans is more important? By not spending federal money on research, our lives don’t get worse; they just won’t get better. On the other hand, if you skimp on education and social security, people die and the country crumbles. It is through this persuasive argument that senators and representatives have ensured that non-vital (i.e non-military) research and exploration has all but dried up.

It’s incredibly hard to counter this argument unless you can provide a solid, tangible reason for spending billions of dollars on research and exploration. Fortunately, you only have to look back a few hundred years to see the effect that exploration can have on society and mankind as a whole: just look back at the discovery of North America and foundation of the greatest, vastest, richest, and most powerful nation the world has ever seen. If North America had not been discovered and settled, where do you think the world would be today? There would be no IBM and thus no computers, and certainly no Apollo space program. There would’ve been no Cold War, no Hollywood, and no tea bags. The fact is, the wealth of innovation and discovery brought to us by Americans would never have occurred if Western European society had decided that exploration wasn’t worth it. “Oh no, I quite like England. It’s a bit dull, but rather nice. Why should I give up my beautiful townhouse for a wild camp inhabited by Indians anyway?”

The point is, as long as our life here on Earth is comfortable enough, it will be very hard for governments to cut down on important spending and plow it into space exploration. You can point at our dwindling natural resources and ballooning population, but that’s beyond the point: right now the Joneses really couldn’t care less about exploring and terraforming and inhabiting new planets.

How on earth can you convince the Joneses that a cut in education spending now will result in a billion-fold return in 100 years? It’s almost impossible. The best you can do is take them on a journey through history and carefully point out each exploratory endeavor that humankind has attempted. Explain how we’ve almost entirely explored Earth, and how these discoveries have shaped the society that they live in now. Explain how every new land and vista discovered has led to great cultures and inventions. Explain how almost every tool that they use only exists because of exploration. Boats, planes, computers, shoes — exploration, exploration, exploration, exploration. They’ll either come around and write to their senator demanding investment in space travel, or they’ll simply turn up their nose and say “But what about gas prices? How will that help with gas prices?” It’s worth a shot, though.

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Anonymous

this kind of extra-curricular spending belongs in the private sector where money that long flows like water. i think it’s insane they get 19 billion to lollygag in space. the benefit is not even close to inherently tangible

Anonymous

If $19B for space is a lollygag, then what is the US government paying Halliburton over $5B for a single contract to do work in Iraq? Where’s that tangible result we get from that $5B?

There’s a lot more wasteful things in our government than NASA going into space to conduct/maintain scientific experiments having to do with medical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, and other branches of scientific research to benefit people.

Red Scourge

Didn’t you get the memo? They’re spending that $5 billion because it helps them further their agenda of being the big worldwide American empire that controls everyone and everything. With a national debt this high, we need to tighten the belt a bit by focusing less on screwing around with rockets and more on what we’re good at – blowing people up and taking their oil, then rebuilding their country so we can tell them how virtuous we are, and leveraging that into convincing them to give us more oil for cheaper, and if that doesn’t work, threatening them.

Red Scourge

Didn’t you get the memo? They’re spending that $5 billion because it helps them further their agenda of being the big worldwide American empire that controls everyone and everything. With a national debt this high, we need to tighten the belt a bit by focusing less on screwing around with rockets and more on what we’re good at – blowing people up and taking their oil, then rebuilding their country so we can tell them how virtuous we are, and leveraging that into convincing them to give us more oil for cheaper, and if that doesn’t work, threatening them.

Red Scourge

Didn’t you get the memo? They’re spending that $5 billion because it helps them further their agenda of being the big worldwide American empire that controls everyone and everything. With a national debt this high, we need to tighten the belt a bit by focusing less on screwing around with rockets and more on what we’re good at – blowing people up and taking their oil, then rebuilding their country so we can tell them how virtuous we are, and leveraging that into convincing them to give us more oil for cheaper, and if that doesn’t work, threatening them.

Red Scourge

Didn’t you get the memo? They’re spending that $5 billion because it helps them further their agenda of being the big worldwide American empire that controls everyone and everything. With a national debt this high, we need to tighten the belt a bit by focusing less on screwing around with rockets and more on what we’re good at – blowing people up and taking their oil, then rebuilding their country so we can tell them how virtuous we are, and leveraging that into convincing them to give us more oil for cheaper, and if that doesn’t work, threatening them.

Red Scourge

Didn’t you get the memo? They’re spending that $5 billion because it helps them further their agenda of being the big worldwide American empire that controls everyone and everything. With a national debt this high, we need to tighten the belt a bit by focusing less on screwing around with rockets and more on what we’re good at – blowing people up and taking their oil, then rebuilding their country so we can tell them how virtuous we are, and leveraging that into convincing them to give us more oil for cheaper, and if that doesn’t work, threatening them.

Minesstudent

Now let me ask you this, where would you rather spend that 19B? High School sports? Cause let me tell you this, hard working teenagers such as I are sick and tired of seeing endless spending in non academic programs. The school provides athletes with plaques for the walls and trophies to take home, while the top 3% students in the school (GPA wise) are given flimsy rice paper certificates with stickers on them that were falling off by the end of the ceremony. I for one feel that NASA should be given 3 fold what it has been given. Our society would not be where it is with out exploration of any type. The degree i will be working for starting next year will prepare me for research and develope of machines that will be used to drill on mars and the moon to find alternative energy sources for earth’s endless thirst for more energy. Without the advancements that NASA has achieved that technology would not be possible. Space exploration is a vital sector to earth’s productiveness and the way we ALL live our lives. Now tell me, how wasteful is it? Because i see it as a vital foundation to allow us to keep living our lives the way we do.

Anonymous

this kind of extra-curricular spending belongs in the private sector where money that long flows like water. i think it’s insane they get 19 billion to lollygag in space. the benefit is not even close to inherently tangible

http://profiles.google.com/jhancockdarwin James Hancock

We don’t need a public space program. Stealing money from people that don’t care and don’t want their money spent that way is criminal.

Privatize the entire thing. Sell off NASA and it’s assets and let the public sector do it. It’s only because NASA is willing to lose money on every satellite it puts in orbit that they’ve kept a virtual monopoly on space. And that losing of money, is losing of tax payer’s dollars.

The shuttle was supposed to cost about 20 million (inflation adjusted) to launch and return when it was first built. It now costs north of $500 million for the same flight. Why? Because it’s government run.

Privatize it entirely. If the military has a reason to be there, they can be there themselves. And everyone else can do it for the profit motive. You’ll get one hell of a lot more out of the money put in, and people like myself that think that government has no place in funding science or anything else won’t have to have a gun put to our heads by our government to force us to give up our hard earned dollars for this fool’s errand.

The entire program has been a massive boondoggle joke from the beginning. End it. Let private organizations fund it on their own dime. There are lots of private reasons to be there. So let them be there and stop competing with them to prevent them from being there.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

Do you call ‘overpopulation’ and ‘running out of resources’ private/commercial reasons…?

Put it this way, if we had more food, more resources, and cheaper land prices, pensions could be made a lot smaller.

Not to mention, if we colonized space, the need for huge (public!) defense budgets would mostly go out the window.

Red Scourge

Overpopulation was a big concern since the 50s, and it hasn’t killed us yet. Running out of resources is an equally ridiculous claim when proven oil reserves have been growing constantly for the last 100 years. Prices are rising, but it is because more and more oil is going to commodity market speculators and so the cost is raised since bringing more drilling capacity online in a short period is expensive. The electric car will save us in time, don’t worry, companies like Tesla will make sure of that. If we start running into real problems, we can just get out of the business of blowing foreigners up and then feeding them and rebuilding their countries after we’ve destroyed their livelihoods.

Red Scourge

Overpopulation was a big concern since the 50s, and it hasn’t killed us yet. Running out of resources is an equally ridiculous claim when proven oil reserves have been growing constantly for the last 100 years. Prices are rising, but it is because more and more oil is going to commodity market speculators and so the cost is raised since bringing more drilling capacity online in a short period is expensive. The electric car will save us in time, don’t worry, companies like Tesla will make sure of that. If we start running into real problems, we can just get out of the business of blowing foreigners up and then feeding them and rebuilding their countries after we’ve destroyed their livelihoods.

Red Scourge

Overpopulation was a big concern since the 50s, and it hasn’t killed us yet. Running out of resources is an equally ridiculous claim when proven oil reserves have been growing constantly for the last 100 years. Prices are rising, but it is because more and more oil is going to commodity market speculators and so the cost is raised since bringing more drilling capacity online in a short period is expensive. The electric car will save us in time, don’t worry, companies like Tesla will make sure of that. If we start running into real problems, we can just get out of the business of blowing foreigners up and then feeding them and rebuilding their countries after we’ve destroyed their livelihoods.

Red Scourge

The other thing to consider is that the price system takes care of resources being scarce, for example as copper prices rise, fiber optics start being used for data cables instead, etc. Prices of things rising is not in itself a bad thing, it just means if we want something, we need to be willing to pay the price for it, and if we aren’t, we just need to look for alternatives. If you factor in inflation, the price of goods today of almost all kinds are at historic lows, and where they are not, it is usually due to government manipulation of the markets or arbitrary laws that keep prices high, such as with real estate and oil.

Red Scourge

The other thing to consider is that the price system takes care of resources being scarce, for example as copper prices rise, fiber optics start being used for data cables instead, etc. Prices of things rising is not in itself a bad thing, it just means if we want something, we need to be willing to pay the price for it, and if we aren’t, we just need to look for alternatives. If you factor in inflation, the price of goods today of almost all kinds are at historic lows, and where they are not, it is usually due to government manipulation of the markets or arbitrary laws that keep prices high, such as with real estate and oil.

Red Scourge

The other thing to consider is that the price system takes care of resources being scarce, for example as copper prices rise, fiber optics start being used for data cables instead, etc. Prices of things rising is not in itself a bad thing, it just means if we want something, we need to be willing to pay the price for it, and if we aren’t, we just need to look for alternatives. If you factor in inflation, the price of goods today of almost all kinds are at historic lows, and where they are not, it is usually due to government manipulation of the markets or arbitrary laws that keep prices high, such as with real estate and oil.

Red Scourge

The other thing to consider is that the price system takes care of resources being scarce, for example as copper prices rise, fiber optics start being used for data cables instead, etc. Prices of things rising is not in itself a bad thing, it just means if we want something, we need to be willing to pay the price for it, and if we aren’t, we just need to look for alternatives. If you factor in inflation, the price of goods today of almost all kinds are at historic lows, and where they are not, it is usually due to government manipulation of the markets or arbitrary laws that keep prices high, such as with real estate and oil.

Red Scourge

The other thing to consider is that the price system takes care of resources being scarce, for example as copper prices rise, fiber optics start being used for data cables instead, etc. Prices of things rising is not in itself a bad thing, it just means if we want something, we need to be willing to pay the price for it, and if we aren’t, we just need to look for alternatives. If you factor in inflation, the price of goods today of almost all kinds are at historic lows, and where they are not, it is usually due to government manipulation of the markets or arbitrary laws that keep prices high, such as with real estate and oil.

Red Scourge

The other thing to consider is that the price system takes care of resources being scarce, for example as copper prices rise, fiber optics start being used for data cables instead, etc. Prices of things rising is not in itself a bad thing, it just means if we want something, we need to be willing to pay the price for it, and if we aren’t, we just need to look for alternatives. If you factor in inflation, the price of goods today of almost all kinds are at historic lows, and where they are not, it is usually due to government manipulation of the markets or arbitrary laws that keep prices high, such as with real estate and oil.

Anonymous

Actually, NASA hasn’t had a monopoly or anything near it. The Russian launch program for decades has been far more active at lifting non-governmental payloads into space because of their near-equatorial launch sites which allows them about a 15% larger payload capacity per ton of fuel expended.

As for what the STS program was supposed to cost:

“Early during development of the space shuttle, NASA had estimated that
the program would cost $7.45 billion ($43 billion in 2011 dollars,
adjusting for inflation) in development/non-recurring costs, and $9.3M
($54M in 2011 dollars) per flight.”

– From Wikipedia, which sourced : Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. February 1973. p. 39

” The exact breakdown into non-recurring and recurring costs is not
available, but, according to NASA, the average cost to launch a Space
Shuttle as of 2011 is about $450 million per mission.”

Basically, you’re not only going to bring space exploration and study to a halt. But also botanical/agricultural study, pharmaceutical study, and medical study.

As for letting private organizations fund it: they have been. They pay NASA to take payloads up, conduct experiments, etc. The shuttle program hasn’t been giving corporations free work/trips to space.

But, I fully endorse the US government giving you a refund of your tax dollars if you don’t want to fund the space program. But I think in turn if you need medical treatment or something else stemming from its research conducted, that you be made to bear cost plus profit expenses in getting it as if you were buying it from a private provider.

Minesstudent

I don’t think government should be providing FREE school meals….now with what said in your first sentence, “Stealing money from people that don’t care and don’t want their money spent that way is criminal.” That statement goes for many federal expenses such as Free and Reduced meals. You choose to live in the United States so do not think they are stealing money from you, everyone has to pay their part to keep America the way it is and to support progress.

“The entire program has been a massive boondoggle joke from the beginning. End it.” Really? ok, when North Korea finally is able to launch an ICBM into space do not expect the governmnet to know where it is at since NASA was a major developer of rockets that launched military satelites into space during the cold war to keep an eye out for ICBMs. You’re the one who wants the U.S. out of space, hope we survive when the world breaks out into another world war faught by missles that are launched into space….

http://bleacherreport.com/users/535519-nick-p nick price

reviving the space program should be a high priority for our next President

Cary Deam

Wow!

John

I’m a full supporter of the space program. There are answers out there that we need to know, imo.

Cary Deam

I’m sorry John that you dont know the answers our government does but they will not tell you because you would flip out if you knew the real truth!

John

Oh, I’m not denying that at all. You’re absolutely 100% correct. I’ll always hate the govt for that, but I also know there are a lot of psychos out there that would go insane if they knew what our govt knew.

Anonymous

Hopefully the Space Program gets back on track soon, it’s already given us so much that everyone takes for granted, it’s easily paid for itself.

For a start sateliites do a lot more than just make sure you don’t forget how to get to work every day, computer advancements, medical benifits, hydroponics, air travel safety, smoke detectors, crop mangement, I’m sure gooogle will find a load more stuff.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1223563048 Angel Ham

We owe so much to NASA, from things like invisible braces, scratch resistant lenses to teflon among other things.

BUT everybody knows the Republicans need those billions for teaching Abstinence in schools so everybody is effed now.

I think the one travesty is that NASA makes all this stuff through research, then private sector is essentially handed it to mimic or make, and they get all the money.

That’s how to make NASA profitable! Sue all the companies that mimicked their inventions for patent infringement! X-D lolz

I remember when Tang was all the rage when I was really little just a few years after the moon landings and all. Lots of kids in kindergarten and 1st grade drank it back then.

Too bad we’re cutting research that makes useful inventions for mankind, and continuing funding waffling regimes, paying for the welfare of other nations, and help countries that still have large opium trades in their countryside.

Oh yeah, then there’s the politicians funneling $10Bs every year into specially-worded earmarks that get their campaign donors a slice of the payback…i mean, American Dream.

http://twitter.com/brobof brobof

Alas even I know that as a Federal agency: NASA is not allowed to make a profit. Indeed it is not even allowed to advertise.
Your private commercial space program is your only hope.
Go Elon :)

Anonymous

But, NASA can charge “at cost”. ;-)

Anonymous

I paid $21.87 for an iPad 2 32-GB and my girlfriend loves her Panasonic

Lumix GF 1 Camera that we got for $ 38.76 there arriving tomorrow by UPS.

I will never pay such expensive retail prices in stores again. Especially

when I also sold a 40 inch LED TV to my boss for $ 657 which only cost me

The moderator of this site should really delete these posts. It does not look good.

Han Wei

I agree with the title completely, but it’s all downhill from there.

It seems like the only piece of persuasive “evidence” in this essay is:

“It’s incredibly hard to counter this argument unless you can provide a solid, tangible reason for spending billions of dollars on research and exploration. Fortunately, you only have to look back a few hundred years to see the effect that exploration can have on society and mankind as a whole: just look back at the discovery of North America and foundation of the greatest, vastest, richest, and most powerful nation the world has ever seen. If North America had not been discovered and settled, where do you think the world would be today? There would be no IBM and thus no computers, and certainly no Apollo space program. There would’ve been no Cold War, no Hollywood, and no tea bags. The fact is, the wealth of innovation and discovery brought to us by Americans would never have occurred if Western European society had decided that exploration wasn’t worth it. “Oh no, I quite like England. It’s a bit dull, but rather nice. Why should I give up my beautiful townhouse for a wild camp inhabited by Indians anyway?””

and the entire rest of the essay consists of unfounded assertions building on that. Is that accurate?Does no one else have major problems with every point in this paragraph after the first sentence?
* “greatest, vastest, richest, and most powerful nation the world has ever seen”
– to the extent that this is true, what about this is a *good* thing? Oceania in George Orwell’s 1984 was arguably all of these things, and but can we agree it’s existence wouldn’t have been a good thing?
– it isn’t very true in the first place,
+ there are plenty of measures by which America isn’t the “greatest nation the world has ever seen”, greatest is a very vague word, certainly many arguably and some unequivocally horrible things have been a result of America’s existence, many of them done deliberately by leaders representing it + by all measures of geographical area and many of diversity America isn’t the “vastest nation the world has ever seen”, I’m not sure what else could be meant by “vastest”
+ there certainly exist measures by which America is neither the “richest” nor “most powerful nation the world has ever seen”, but I concede that this is true by most measures. However, the point that this is not necessarily good seeing as the very bad Oceania is these things applies especially well to these. – the fall of all the Native American societies, commonly called a “genocide”, is completely ignored, as if *of course* that’s no big deal compared to all the ways America today is “great”
* if North America had not been discovered and settled, it is indeed highly unlikely there would have been any organization like a modern corporation with a name with the initials IBM, and it is indeed highly unlikely there would have been an effort to go to space under the name of the Apollo program. But the article seems to be saying technological and scientific progress would’ve stopped at the Victorian Era if it weren’t for America and hence the Age of Discovery. Does anyone really believe that? The Industrial Revolution started in England, the basic ideas for computers were all due to European mathematicians like Turing, the first program that put a human in space was Russian, the World Wide Web was invented by an Englishman at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research–the acronym is all out of order to us because it’s in *French*–and that’s just the examples I can think of off the top of my head based on my limited and *completely American-centric* knowledge of history.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

Hehe, I’m not denying the fact that great inventions have come from other countries — but just in the CERN/WWW case… would the WWW have been invented if there was no Internet?

(And would there be an Internet if AT&T didn’t exist?)

Of course it’s impossible to say with any accuracy how the world would look without the USA, though.

Thanks for taking the time to comment!

http://twitter.com/kowboykoder Cowboy Coder

Kind of distasteful how the essay turned into justification of genocide and theft.

http://space.fm spacestation

nice photograph of earth

Anonymous

Our comfortable lives will not be comfortable forever, much less now that the developing countries are growing at a rapid pace (and rightfully do so). We live in a world of limited resources that must be shared by an increasingly growing population and that is not sustainable in the long term.
Even if the space colonization task is enormous, if we limit ourselves to the earth the future looks problematic, if mankind is not able to size itself in a rational way (assuming something like that can be done in an ethical way) nature will do the work for us in mostly unpleasant ways.

Anonymous

Surely NASA program was good. But not good enough.
Privatize space program is good step.
The space race has just begun.
Reviving NASA is purely stupid.

Anonymous

I remember that about 15 years ago, a president setup less stringent means to get home loans on families but put in place rules for banks and financial institutions to strictly follow and departments/agencies to oversee their operations.

Then about 8 years ago, another president and his party’s being in control of Congress proceeded to cut budgets for the agencies overseeing the financial and banking industries…saying that they could police themselves.

Look at what the private financial sector did to the world economy when they were given self-responsibility.

Look at what the private oil sector did in our country in the late 1970s/early 1980s. I remember going to Elk City, Oklahoma when my father was working there for the US Dept. of the Interior, and seeing entire apartment complexes that local people had setup to house the oil workers almost totally empty. But, the oil companies just wildcatted the oil until the price dove. Then, they left without even a thank you or trying to help keep the local economy somewhat stable. When their enormous profits left, so did they. Tough luck, local businesses and consumers.

I trust private industry to do things right about as far as I can throw a black hole. If they aren’t getting a huge payback, they’re either going to not do it anymore…or they will try to find loopholes that let them reduce manpower, equipment or resources so they can make as much as possible…even at the risk of reducing safety.

Don’t believe that? Just look into the BP oil spill and how many supervisors and managers didn’t demand that warning equipment be fixed before continuing operations, or that the right materials were used. It was more about meeting a timeline and keeping cost as low as they could, even at the increased risk of an accident and killing workers.

So, trust in the private sector…and you’re guaranteed to at least get the least quality product that you’re willing to tolerate.

Just remember:

The biggest difference between government and a corporation:

Government is responsible to answer to the people.

Private business is responsible only to their shareholders.

Doug Northcote

Those who think we dont need a space program, dont understand what the space program has already done for us. Or will do for us.

Asteroid mining. And no I’m not talking about just nickel/iron ore. Name it, its out there. I remember something about 433 Eros, astroid that has something like 3 Trillion in gold on that one rock alone. How about a bit of copper here and there. No need for that one either right? Wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining Or the fact that one rock could supply all the iron needs for the entire planet for several million years… Want to be green? Put some heavy industry out there, not here.

Its not even really about sending all the stuff up, its about getting out there a bit more and then being able to build it on the moon to start and bootstrapping the rest of the way out. We’ve now eaten our seed corn. Well done, well done.

Anonymous

I agree with the need to continue the space exploration program, and with most of the article up until the first sentance of the last paragraph. You start the article talking about DEFENSE taking up $680 Billion, projected to expand to $1.4 Trillion next year, and then end the article saying you should cut EDUCATION funding to pay for the space program. How about taking an additional half percent from the DEFENSE budget instead. After all, if we keep cutting education, where are the engineers, doctors, etc for the space program going to come from??? China???

I see cuts in education as a way to fund programs that need highly educated staff as cutting your own throat.

Anonymous

I agree with the need to continue the space exploration program, and with most of the article up until the first sentence of the last paragraph. You start the article talking about DEFENSE taking up $680 Billion, projected to expand to $1.4 Trillion next year, and then end the article saying you should cut EDUCATION funding to pay for the space program. How about taking an additional half percent from the DEFENSE budget instead? After all, if we keep cutting education, where are the scientists, engineers, doctors, etc for the space program going to come from??? China???
I see cuts in education as a way to fund programs that need highly educated staff as cutting your own throat.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FQNQYLQPL43TRGMQHYUTD3JFL4 Ed

The problem with education in the US is not the budget. We spend about double per student compared with France, Germany or Japan.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_THFLRBEUCJLKB2YCVXLTSY3XDM orvandw

As an “old person” whose eyes filled with tears of pride watching Neil Armstrong set foot live on the moon, and whose frustration that we’ve not ventured out of near-Earth orbit for THIRTY NINE YEARS NOW simmers just below the surface, this article hit close to home. The U.S. space program was a great example of what mankind can do when they set their mind to it, and the sharp drop of interest by the public after we reached the moon showed how little most people realize the enormous benefits gained through space exploration.

In today’s contentious political atmosphere, it’s highly unlikely there will ever again be enough people who realize the big-picture benefits to secure appropriate funding for serious space exploration, and we’ll be limited to dabbling with unmanned devices every so often. It’s sad that it took the fear that the Russians would ‘beat us’ to make space exploration a priority, and sad that since this ‘threat’ no longer exists it falls to near the bottom of the pile, when there is so much to be gained from a relatively small expenditure.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

Thanks for the “old person” insight :)

Anonymous

There is nothing in this article that demonstrates why GOVERNMENT needs to be involved in space programs. Government control results in overly expensive programs that by their nature stifle innovation and discourage multiple approaches.

Far better to have private enterprise pursue it, with an absolute minimum of government interference. In particular, this will require eliminating ITAR restrictions that prohibit private international cooperation.

The argument about how much money government wastes in other areas is a red herring. The proper response to them is to cut and/or eliminate those expenditures as well.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FQNQYLQPL43TRGMQHYUTD3JFL4 Ed

For most of the space age, it was illegal for private companies to launch in the US. The government created it’s own monopoly. Now that monopoly is going away…and this is for the better. Competition leads to excellence at lower cost. Monopolies have never been efficient or particularly innovative.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_THFLRBEUCJLKB2YCVXLTSY3XDM orvandw

As an “old person” whose eyes filled with tears of joy watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and whose exasperation that we’ve not ventured out of near-Earth orbit for THIRTY NINE YEARS NOW simmers just below the surface, this article hits close to home on my feelings about the United States’ complete lack of any kind of manned space program now.
Landing on the moon clearly demonstrated the lofty goals mankind can reach. It’s sad that the U.S. needed the fear that ‘the Russians will get there first’ to make space exploration a priority, and sadder still how quickly public interest waned once we reached the moon, such that even the last planned flights were cancelled. With the lack of any similar ‘threat’ and the present contentious political atmosphere it’s unlikely that there will ever again be enough people who realize the enormous benefits of space exploration to be able to secure appropriate funding. How short-sighted to lose so many massive potential benefits for such a relatively small expenditure.

Harry Green

I thought this was a decent article, I’m in the military but honestly part of the reason our budget is so high is because we go into other countries, spending millions just in transporting equipment before you even go into transporting troops, maintenance of equipment, pay roll, building fobs, etc. We trash the place (i.e. Iraq) and then we say hey we’ll help you fix it even though we have problems in our country such as education being cut, wic, and other programs we actually need. The problem is war is big business, and if it wasn’t this conflict we were in, we would just find another for that same reason. I think the country is caring less and less about the younger generations but I digress

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

Yep, true, the logistics of warfare are truly mind boggling.

Thanks for the input!

Anonymous

“We need a space program”
The end of the shuttle program has been planned for years. It’s not like it was a big surprise. When you put the biggest “social welfare” spenders in history in charge, you can’t expect there to be any money left over for hard science.

Anonymous

“We need a space program”
The end of the shuttle program has been planned for years. It’s not like it was a big surprise. When you put the biggest “social welfare” spenders in history in charge, you can’t expect there to be any money left over for hard science.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FQNQYLQPL43TRGMQHYUTD3JFL4 Ed

The article completely misses the point. We should have a space program, but it should be an unmanned program. Not one peer reviewed research paper has come out of the ISS. ISS was never designed for real science….it’s mission was to give the space shuttle a place to go….and the purpose of the space shuttle was to build the ISS. The contractors were the only ones that benefited.

If you want real science and exploration, you need a well run unmanned program. Manned programs take the money away from the real work of NASA.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk Sebastian Anthony

Unmanned is certainly an option, at least to begin with — and as far as I know, most of NASA’s money is now being put into unmanned probes, rovers, etc.

We do need to get off this planet eventually, though :P

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FQNQYLQPL43TRGMQHYUTD3JFL4 Ed

The article completely misses the point. We should have a space program, but it should be an unmanned program. Not one peer reviewed research paper has come out of the ISS. ISS was never designed for real science….it’s mission was to give the space shuttle a place to go….and the purpose of the space shuttle was to build the ISS. The contractors were the only ones that benefited.

If you want real science and exploration, you need a well run unmanned program. Manned programs take the money away from the real work of NASA.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_FQNQYLQPL43TRGMQHYUTD3JFL4 Ed

The article completely misses the point. We should have a space program, but it should be an unmanned program. Not one peer reviewed research paper has come out of the ISS. ISS was never designed for real science….it’s mission was to give the space shuttle a place to go….and the purpose of the space shuttle was to build the ISS. The contractors were the only ones that benefited.

If you want real science and exploration, you need a well run unmanned program. Manned programs take the money away from the real work of NASA.

scott Ashley

Space exploration is important, but changes are necessary. We are no longer in a space race; we will not be rushing to plant an American flag on Mars. The US, Russian and EU space agency should become one and the cost of space exploration should be shared with the world. I for one would not mind seeing several flags planted on Mars; ours being one of them.

http://www.jdapdx.com/ jimdittmer

I think it’s interesting that the prevailing public opinion that the end of the shuttle program is the end of our exploration of space and that it’s the Republican’s fault.

First, this isn’t even the end of the manned space program much less the demise of space exploration. It may signal the end of the US government being the prime locus of space research, but it by no means signals the end of either the unmanned space program or the manned one- the banner will simply be taken up by other countries and private industry. Second, it’s not politics that are causing the cuts in the manned program, it’s economics. The truth is that we’ve picked the low hanging fruit. Everything we do in space from here on gets incredibly expensive. Sending a small handful of humans to Mars is several orders of magnitude harder than sending them to the Moon. Building a functioning Moon base would be hundreds of times more expensive than building the Space Station- and is likely to always be so. It has now become important to look at the opportunity cost of the funds spent. We couldsend a hundred, perhaps a thousand,long term unmanned missions to Mars for the cost of sending a single, tiny contingent of humanity there for a brief excursion.

I’m going to miss the excitement of manned rocket launches, of seeing people from this planet step out on to another. It fills some basic need in almost all of us to believe there is something more to be accomplished. But there are practical limits to human space exploration and we may have reached them at least for the time being. Until we can answer the question, “Why do we need to go?” with something other than “Because it’s there”, we are destined to do our exploration at arms length…

Exquisite Corpse

As a child born in 1970, I didn’t really get to see the lunar landings or moonwalk first hand. But thanks to the “space race,” space travel was the zeitgeist of the late 60’s and early 70’s, and science fiction centered on the theme of space travel and human conquest of space has ever grown in popularity from the 50’s onward.

I count myself lucky to have grown up simultaneously to the rise of the transistor, the integrated circuit, and ultimately computer technology. Perhaps due to growing up in the afterglow of the lunar landings, perhaps due to the popularity of star trek, of star wars, of battlestar galactica, I simply assumed others – the rest of society and certainly “the powers that be” – held foremost the same goal of exploring the “final frontier,” of christening the birth of humankinds greatest collective conquest thus far.

Somewhere, in the back of my mind, perhaps borne of the early influence of space travels prominent place in the American culture and media of my youth, perhaps born of some indefinable yearning, perhaps a distant genetic memory of aeons past when humanity or some other culture or race may have once roamed the stars, I always expected that humanity would develop a strong presence in space during my lifetime. I was naive enough to see as the pinnacle of human accomplishment, the achievement of a manned mission to Mars in my lifetime, neglecting such down to earth issues as the growing presence of pollution or the “energy crisis,” never mind concern for the quality of life of much of humanity or issues like global poverty or hunger.

So it is that I find myself terribly disappointed in the all too human failing of humanity’s collective aspirations in this regard.

As my life progressed into the 80’s, I assumed it would be a short while before humankind was reaching for the stars. The Reagan era saw the push for the Strategic Defense Initiative, otherwise known as the Star Wars program of orbiting anti-missile defensive satellites. As a teenager nonetheless I closely followed with some anticipation the development of “nuclear batteries” and other exotic power sources capable of providing the energy needed for both propulsion systems of these satellites as well as the planned payloads of high power lasers and particle beam weaponry.

From numerous articles in forward looking magazines like Omni, and the existence of Skylab and Mir orbiting space stations, I was still easily convinced that it would only be a short time before humankind began the preprations for the lunar bases to serve as the lower gravity launching points necessary for manned exploration of interplanetary space by spacecraft powered by conventional rocket propulsion methods.

As we came to the 1990’s here in the US politics seemed dominated by the tragedy of the first Iraq war. Meanwhile, research on quantum mechanics, quantum gravity, spin waves, and other advances in physics and – more importantly to space travel, physical sciences engineering R & D – seemed to continue unabated.

I figured surely by the millenium we’d see something like field propulsion technology emerge from many presumed years of behind the scenes secret development.

After all, the first prototypes of the F-117 stealh bomber may have flown as early as 1973, but we did not see the plane enter full production for military service until 1981, and its existence was not even acknowledged by our government’s military until 1988, just two years before Lockheed delivered its last new F-117 in 1990.

But the millenium came and went seemingly without incident. It wasn’t until September 11th of 2001 that the US and America were shocked by the devastation wrought upon the twin towers of the world trade center. I watched as the balance of power shifted away from funding of public works projects and agencies like NASA, and more and more money and talent has instead been devoted to building a modern technocratic police state.

Of course it has been decades since humanity could have begun work on developing the necessary self-sustaining, modular and servicable civil engineering and utility infrastructures necessary for oribiting space stations. Much of the technology needed to build massive habitable structures on this scale already exists in pieces but has yet to be assembled into a coherent building practice suitable for deployment in orbit or on the moon.

Many claim the “global elites” are worried about overpopulation, saying the earths current population and rate of growth is unsustainable.

Yet humanity has built its cities largely in flat, 2-dimensional sheets. Simple extrapolation of these flat sheets even nominally into the third dimension would geometrically increase the available surface area of human habitation. One can easily see how building a skyscraper 100 stories tall, 10 city blocks long and 10 city blocks wide could easily contain the entire population of a large city, but the considerations of power, water, gas, and other utility and commodity distribution within such a structure have never been fully fleshed out. Of coruse this could also be accomplished by building cities in layers, layering streets and buildings atop one another. But more realistically this requires a new design paradigm such as that espoused in Paolo Soleri’s concept of “Arcology”. A method of building modular, self contained and most importantly, repairable, internally repositionable and even movable structures is needed, with built in provisions for attaching specialized cranes and other equipment capable of moving these modular segments from inside the structure.

The potential applications of this to both overpopulation and space travel are immediately obvious, and would quickly lead to the beginning of a new kind of civic paradigm necessary for habitation of such structures.

I turned 40 last year. My hopes of ever setting foot on another celestial body are rapidly diminishing, especially if I have to depend on human technology and aspirations for the ride there. But I will never let go of the dream of seeing humanity as a spacefaring civilization, like perhaps once it was in the distant haze of history before human memory.

Hopefully the “real” space program continues somewhere behind closed doors in places like Naval Space Command, funded by the huge “black budgets” that dwarf the nations spending on everything else from healthcare to fiscal recovery of the nations city and state governments.

Tik B Lang

Because the way humans consume things and pollute the environment, the govt is preparing for the temporary shelter for the lucky few just in case the earth cannot sustain life.

They are thinking of creating a couple of bubble cities or artificial homes to make sure humans will not go extinct like the dinosaurs. They will “INVENT” a protected place where man will procreate and continue life.

http://twitter.com/brobof brobof

Sorry you had me up to: “it is now solely the responsibility of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to supply the International Space Station until its retirement in 2020.”
RUBBISH! ATV (ESA); HTV (JAXA); No wonder why they are looking to partner with RKA.
The ISS will probably be around until 2028 and beyond… At least the non American parts will be. And how many of those are there? Hmmm.

The rest of the article is flawed too IMHO

However this in particular stuck in my ‘craw’ :
“If North America had not been discovered and settled, where do you think the world would be today?” A lot better off IMHO. Indeed the plains Indians living in harmony with the land would probably have been a better custodian of the Land for a starters.
Added value http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRbonBSHVj0
Hows that Fracking business going for you?

http://twitter.com/VirtualMark Mark Day

i think the saddest thing about this is how much science loses out to military spending. it shows the true state of the human race.

the only thing in favour of putting current nasa missions on hold, is so that we can research better forms of propulsion, as chemical rockets are so useless in space. it takes months just to get to mars!

Cary Deam

Why we dont need a mars mission that cost a trillion dollars when our country is debt a trillion dollars!!!!!!!!! What would happen if we were to use the money to develop the low cost of converting ocean water to drinking water since the earth is 80% water we would not run out…! what would happen if we used the same money to horizantaly drill in the us and lower the cost of fuel to below 17 cents a gallon for the next millinium. Come on people get a clue this country is dying due to greed.

Cary Deam

imagine a country that knew the truth it would be anarchy!!!! every peice of technology you see is from the 40’s and 50’s haha we the people are still living in the past but not our government.

http://www.facebook.com/RyanJurado Ryan Jurado

This is beautiful

Kevin Warner

Over 6.6 billion on the planet where are your great x20 grand kids gonna live. Without research their lives may be worse than it was in the Middle Ages cause new problems will come up. Research must be done to better out lives in the future. Wars/religion/politics and putting the economy before the safety of your home all seem to be destructively dangerous. Slavery took hundreds of years to be abolished and my theory on humans is they take too dam long to learn a lesson.

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